On a costings level? We’d have a few tight years in the beginning, then we’d start to show a profit. We’d licence settlers, sell visas. Make the visas really arty so people would regard them as souvenirs. We should have a park mascot. Villem the Bear. Everyone loves bears. Especially if we design him right.”

A little note of panic now, a straight citizen worried he might have been caught driving an unsafe vehicle. German police were legendary for their adherence to the old EU laws on vehicle safety. They were like toys, wound up and left to run down after their owner had gone away on holiday. Nobody had ever come along with new vehicle regulations

Just over a year since its declaration of nationhood, New Potsdam’s border arrangements were still on the ad hoc side of adequate. To Rudi’s eye it looked theatrical and ill-thought-out, but that was the way with new polities. The first thing they tended to do was put up defences. A sure sign of a polity approaching maturity was when the work-crews

“I saw on the news last week that so far this year twelve new nations and sovereign states have come into being in Europe alone.” “And most of them won’t be here this time next year,” said Rudi. “You see?” Dariusz pointed triumphantly at him. “You do have an opinion! I knew you would!” Rudi sighed. “I only know what I see on the news.” “I see

The restaurant business had a lot in common with international relations; there was an awful lot of diplomacy, more often than not of the gunboat kind.

Rudi thought the popular media had inflated them out of all proportion. They were just couriers, and people had been couriering stuff around Europe since at least the Middle Ages, and smuggling things for considerably longer.

Stashing the suit in a situation like this would have been suicidal. He just had to get rid of it the best way he could. He’d dropped the suit’s electronics off a bridge into the Havel, and carried the suit itself with him to the graveyard. He’d dumped it under a bush, pulled the emergency tab, and waited for the enzymes to eat the material. It was

Bradley was one of the most charming people Rudi had ever met, but he could never recall having seen the man actually smile. Just quick grins here and there, and body language absolutely loaded with bonhomie.

IT WAS SAID that if you were a criminal, a member of some tinpot political party, an agitator for a minority interest group, a drug addict, a property speculator, a forger or bootlegger of any kind, an artist, a fashion designer, a writer, underground film director, musician, or just plain crazy, Berlin was where you would eventually end up. It